The Buddha in the Attic (Paperback)

Fall '12 Reading Group List

“This most unusual story is both intriguing and overwhelming. The literary style is striking, and the author offers readers a complete picture of the lives of Japanese mail order brides in the U.S. during the early 1900s. Emotionally moving and a 'must read,' The Buddha in the Attic is perfect for book groups.”
— Stephanie Crowe, Page & Palette, Fairhope, AL
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Description

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner AwardFor FictionNational Book Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize FinalistA New York Times Notable Book

A gorgeous novel by the celebrated author of When the Emperor Was Divine that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago. In eight unforgettable sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of these women, from their arduous journeys by boat, to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; from their experiences raising children who would later reject their culture and language, to the deracinating arrival of war. Once again, Julie Otsuka has written a spellbinding novel about identity and loyalty, and what it means to be an American in uncertain times.

About the Author

Julie Otsuka was born and raised in California. She is the author of the novel When the Emperor Was Divine and a recipient of the Asian American Literary Award, the American Library Association Alex Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York City.

“Otsuka’s incantatory style pulls her prose close to poetry. . . . Filled with evocative descriptive sketches…and hesitantly revelatory confessions.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A fascinating paradox: brief in span yet symphonic in scope, all-encompassing yet vivid in its specifics. Like a pointillist painting, it’s composed of bright spots of color: vignettes that bring whole lives to light in a line or two, adding up to a vibrant group portrait.” —The Seattle Times

“Mesmerizing. . . . Told in a first-person plural voice that feels haunting and intimate, the novel traces the fates of these nameless women in America. . . . Otsuka extracts the grace and strength at the core of immigrant (and female) survival and, with exquisite care, makes us rethink the heartbreak of eternal hope. Though the women vanish, their words linger.” —More

“Spare and stunning. . . . By using the collective ‘we’ to convey a constantly shifting, strongly held group identity within which distinct individuals occasionally emerge and recede, Otsuka has created a tableau as intricate as the pen strokes her humble immigrant girls learned to use in letters to loved ones they’d never see again.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“With great daring and spectacular success, she has woven countless stories gleaned from her research into a chorus of the women’s voices, speaking their collective experience in a plural ‘we,’ while incorporating the wide range of their individual lives. . . . The Buddha in the Attic moves forward in waves of experiences, like movements in a musical composition. . . . By its end, Otsuka’s book has become emblematic of the brides themselves: slender and serene on the outside, tough, weathered and full of secrets on the inside.” —Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

“A gorgeous mosaic of the hopes and dreams that propelled so many immigrants across an ocean to an unknown country. . . . Otsuka illuminates the challenges, suffering and occasional joy that they found in their new homeland. . . . Wrought in exquisite poetry, each sentence spare in words, precise in meaning and eloquently evocative, like a tanka poem, this book is a rare, unique treat. . . . Rapturous detail. . . . A history lesson in heartbreak.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“[Otsuka] brazenly writes in hundreds of voices that rise up into one collective cry of sorrow, loneliness and confusion. . . . The sentences are lean, and the material reflects a shameful time in our nation’s past. . . . Otsuka winds a thread of despair throughout the book, haunting the reader at every chapter. . . . Otsuka masterfully creates a chorus of the unforgettable voices that echo throughout the chambers of this slim but commanding novel, speaking of a time that no American should ever forget.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Daring. . . . Frequently mesmerizing. . . . Otsuka has the moves of cinematographer, zooming in for close-ups, then pulling back for wide lens group shots. . . . [Otsuka is] a master of understatement and apt detail. . . . Her stories seem rooted in curiosity and a desire to understand.” —Bookpage

“Precise, focused. . . . Penetrating. . . . See it and you’ll want to pick it up. Start reading it and you won’t want to put it down. . . . A boldly imagined work that takes a stylistic risk more daring and exciting than many brawnier books five times its size. Even the subject matter is daring. . . . Specific, clear, multitudinous in its grasp and subtly emotional.” —The Huffington Post

The Buddha in the Attic is narrated in the first person plural, i.e., told from the point of view of a group of women rather than an individual. Discuss the impact of this narrative decision on your reading experience.Why do you think the author made the choice to tell the story from this perspective?

Why is the novel called The Buddha in the Attic? To what does the title refer?

The novel opens with the women on the boat traveling from Japan to San Francisco. What does Otsuka tell us is “the first thing [they] did,” and what does this suggest about the trajectories of their lives?

What are the women’s expectations about America? What are their fears? Why are they convinced that “it was better to marry a stranger in America than grow old with a farmer from the village”?

Discuss Otsuka’s use of italics in the novel. What are these shifts in typography meant to connote?How do they add to our knowledge of the women as individuals?

Otsuka tells us that the last words spoken by the women’s mothers still ring in their ears: “You will see: women are weak, but mothers are strong.”What does this mean, and how does the novel bear this out?

In the final sentence of “First Night,” Otsuka writes, “They took us swiftly, repeatedly, all throughout the night, and in the morning when we woke we were theirs.”Discuss the women’s first nights with their new husbands. Are there particular images you found especially powerful? How did you feel reading this short chapter?

Why was the first word of English the women were taught “water”?

In the section entitled “Whites,” Otsuka describes several acts of kindness and compassion on the part of the women’s husbands.In what ways were the husbands useful to them or unexpectedly gentle with them in these early days? How does this reflect the complexity of their relationships?

What are the women’s lives like in these early months in America? How do their experiences and challenges differ from what they had been led to expect?How are they perceived by their husbands?By their employers? Discuss the disparity between the women’s understanding of their role in the American economy and what Otsuka suggests is the American perception of the Japanese women’s power.

Later in this section, the women ask themselves, “Is there any tribe more savage than the Americans?” What occasions this question?What does the author think? What do you think?

Discuss the passage on p. 37 that begins, “We forgot about Buddha. We forgot about God. . . . I fear my soul has died. . . . And often our husbands did not even notice we’d disappeared.”What does Otsuka mean by “disappeared”? What is she suggesting about their spiritual lives, their inner selves?Do the women reappear in this sense in the course of the novel?When?

Throughout the novel, Otsuka uses the phrase “One of us…”Why? What is the effect of this shift in point of view?What does Otsuka achieve through this subtle adjustment?

Otsuka writes, “They gave us new names. They called us Helen and Lily. They called us Margaret. They called us Pearl.”Discuss how this mirrors the names taken by the women’s children later in the novel.

Discuss the complexities and nuances of the relationship between the Japanese women and the white women.Was it strictly an employer/employee relationship, or something more?

What is J-town?Why do the women choose J-town over any attempt to return home?

The section called “Babies” is just six pages long but strikes with unique force. What was your reaction to the experiences of the women in childbirth?Take a close look at the last six sentences of the chapter, with a particular emphasis on the very last sentence.On what note does Otsuka end the chapter, and why?What does that last sentence reveal about Otsuka’s ideas about the future and about the past?

“One by one all the old words we had taught them began to disappear from their heads,” Otsuka writes of the women’s children. Discuss the significance of names and naming in The Buddha in the Attic.What does it mean for these children to reject their mother’s language? What point is Otsuka making about cultural inheritance?

How do the the dreams of the children differ from the dreams of their mothers?

Why do the women feel closer to their husbands than ever before in the section entitled “Traitors”?

How is the structure of the penultimate section, called “Last Day,” different from the structure of all the sections that precede it? Why do you think Otsuka chose to set it apart?

Who narrates the novel’s final section, “A Disappearance”? Why? What is the impact of this dramatic shift?

Discuss themes of guilt, shame, and forgiveness in The Buddha in the Attic.

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